Rus­sell Lat­apy-coached So­ca War­riors will con­tin­ue their prepa­ra­tions for the Dig­i­cel Caribbean Cup Sec­ond Round qual­i­fiers in No­vem­ber, when they face Pana­ma in a friend­ly in­ter­na­tion­al tonight. The match will take place at the Rom­mel Fer­nan­dez Sta­di­um, Pana­ma City, from 8.30 pm. It will be the first of two match­es for Lat­apy's squad in four days as they then trav­el to Be­lize to face that coun­try's na­tion­al team at the Fi­fa Goal Project venue in Bel­mopan at 8 pm on Fri­day.

The So­ca War­riors 20-man squad left here on Sat­ur­day and in­clud­ed one un­capped play­er in bmo­bile Joe Pub­lic mid­field­er Ka­reem Young, a for­mer na­tion­al youth team golfer. A hard tack­ling mid­field­er, Young and fel­low Care­nage-res­i­dent and W Con­nec­tion de­fend­er, Jo­evin Jones, are the on­ly two new­com­ers in the squad which was beat­en by Ja­maica 3-1 in an in­ter­na­tion­al friend­ly at the Mar­vin Lee Sta­di­um, Ma­coya on Au­gust 11. On T&T's last vis­it to Pana­ma in 2007 for a friend­ly en­counter, the host came away with a 2-1 vic­to­ry. How­ev­er, the last meet­ing be­tween both teams, March 2009, end­ed in a 1-0 win for the So­ca War­riors at the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um, Mara­bel­la.

The last win by the So­ca War­riors in Pana­ma was back in 2006 when strik­er Stern John 61st minute item se­cured a 1-0 tri­umph on the Road to Ger­many. The Pana­ma­ni­ans are un­beat­en in their last two match­es at home a 3-1 win over Venezuela last month and a 2-2 draw with Cos­ta Ri­ca on Fri­day last. Look­ing ahead to the match ver­sus Pana­ma, Lat­apy said, "It's an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to come up against a for­mi­da­ble Con­ca­caf op­po­nent.

"Again, every­thing is in re­la­tion to our prepa­ra­tions for the Dig­i­cel Caribbean Cup and we will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see what lev­el we are at against a team that has been im­prov­ing and do­ing quite well in the re­gion." Lat­apy al­so made time to con­grat­u­late the Un­der-17 So­ca Princess­es on their open­ing win over Chile, the first for any T&T team at a Fi­fa World Cup. "I must of­fer my con­grat­u­la­tions to the U-17 women on their vic­to­ry over Chile on Sun­day.

We were on our way to Pana­ma at the time so we missed the match but from all ac­counts I un­der­stand they did the na­tion proud and we want to wish them well in their re­main­ing match­es. We will be root­ing for them in their match against Nige­ria on Wednes­day," Lat­apy said. Fol­low­ing Fri­day's match ver­sus Be­lize the So­ca War­riors are al­so sched­uled to play An­tigua & Bar­bu­da (Sep­tem­ber 17), St Lu­cia (Sep­tem­ber 21), Guyana (Sep­tem­ber 26), Bermu­da (Oc­to­ber 6) and four days lat­er a re­turn match with Ja­maica in Kingston.

Squad

Goal­keep­ers:

Jan-Michael Williams, Mar­vin Phillip

De­fend­ers:

Makan His­lop, Ke­ston Williams, Kern Cu­pid, Ak­lie Ed­wards, Car­lyle Mitchell, Jo­evin Jones

Mid­field­ers:

Hughton Hec­tor, Matthew Bart­hole­mew, Daniel Cyrus, Trent Noel, Ataulla Guer­ra, Hay­den Tin­to, Den­sill Theobald, Ka­reem Young.

For­wards:

De­von Jorsling, Kevon Carter, Ker­ry Bap­tiste, Ja­son Mar­cano.